2 - At the Crosswinds of Empires: The Place of Penang in British, Dutch, and Japanese Imperial Networks

As early as the English East India Company's establishment of an outpost in the late eighteenth century, the island of Penang off the coast of the Malay Peninsula came to be deeply integrated within the intra-, trans-, and extra-imperial networks spanning the British, Dutch, and Japanese empires. Penang’s position in the Straits of Malacca made it an important stop in the lucrative India-China maritime route (and further afield), attracting a dizzying array of settlers and sojourners from across the world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the island became home to a cosmopolitan populace that connected the entrepôt to the rest of the world through intersecting networks that enabled the movement of people, goods, and knowledge.

Tracing the complex interconnections of Penang’s multi-ethnic communities, this paper explores how the port-city came to establish itself as a key site within global exchanges of commodities, capital, culture, knowledge, and people over the long nineteenth century. I make the case that the island remained deeply enmeshed within global circuits thanks to its position at the crossroads of intersecting empires. By doing so, this paper serves as a reconceptualisation of Penang away from conventional narratives of its relegation into becoming solely a regional entrepôt following the rise of Singapore. Moreover, it provides a case study for the importance of re-examining overlooked port-cities as sites of global interconnection and recovering their histories to demonstrate how they were actively involved in the construction and maintenance of imperial networks rather than simply passive nodes within them.